Microsoft on Wednesday debuted its new, streamlined intellectual-property (IP) licensing strategy with the announcement that it is now offering, for a fee, its file allocation table (FAT) file system and ClearType font-rendering technologies to any interested licensees.

At the same time, the Redmond software company also launched a one-stop IP licensing Web site, where it displays the various software and specifications it is offering to license under various royalty- and royalty-free plans. Currently listed, in addition to FAT and ClearType, are Microsoft's Office 2003 XML schemas (the bulk of which are set to go public this Friday) and a number of standards specifications, including broadband Sockets; WS-Security; and Business Process Execution Language for Web Services, or BPEL, 1.1.

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About the Author

Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named "one of the most active middleware reporters in the world" by Th... See Full Bio

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